Frank Sinatra

Associated Press

Widely held to be the greatest singer in American pop history and one of the most successful entertainers of the 20th century, Frank Sinatra was also the first modern pop superstar. He defined that role in the early 1940's when his first solo appearances provoked the kind of mass pandemonium that later greeted Elvis Presley and the Beatles.

During a show business career that spanned more than 50 years and comprised recordings, film and television as well as countless performances in nightclubs, concert halls and sports arenas, Sinatra stood as a singular mirror of the American psyche.

His evolution from the idealistic crooner of the early 1940's to the sophisticated swinger of the 50's and 60's seemed to personify the country's loss of innocence. During World War II, Sinatra's tender romanticism served as the dreamy emotional link between millions of women and their husbands and boyfriends fighting overseas. Reinventing himself in the 50's, the starry-eyed boy next door turned into the cosmopolitan man of the world, a bruised romantic with a tough-guy streak and a song for every emotional season.

In a series of brilliant conceptual albums, he codified a musical vocabulary of adult relationships with which millions identified. The haunted voice heard on a jukebox in the wee small hours of the morning lamenting the end of a love affair was the same voice that jubilantly invited the world to ''come fly with me'' to exotic realms in a never-ending party.

Highlights From the Archives

Editorial Desk

Unlike many cultural icons, Frank Sinatra never seemed frozen in time. He appeared always in the prime of life, a man of resilience whose talent survived not only setbacks and scandal but 60 years of turbulent cultural change.

May 16, 1998opinionEditorial

The Arts/Cultural Desk

From Hollywood to the back streets of Hoboken, from seats of power in Europe and America to gritty barrooms where the old romantic ballads still intoxicate the soul, they mourned Frank Sinatra yesterday, not only as one of a century's most influential singers but as someone who had touched them intimately with a voice, a mood, a poignant memory.

May 16, 1998moviesNews

Arts and Leisure Desk

Beyond the brawling, beyond all the wildly variable films, it will be Frank Sinatra's music that will shape his legacy. True, his image as a vulnerable tough guy, and his actorly skills, pervaded his best singing. But it was that singing itself, as he moved from callow youth to lonely swinger to aging but still magisterial stylist, that defined Sinatra's artistry.

May 24, 1998artsNews

The Arts/Cultural Desk

The first thing you remember, of course, is the voice -- at one time, the most famous voice in the world, the voice that bridged decades from World War II to the waning years of the 20th century, the voice that conjured romance and loneliness, bright dreams and misplaced hopes, the voice that millions danced to, made love to and listened to on jukeboxes and radios and hi-fi sets. It was a voice, Bruce Springsteen would later say, filled with ''bad attitude, life, beauty, excitement, a nasty sense of freedom, sex and a sad knowledge of the ways of the world.''